Argentine tells of being tortured while pregnant (dirty war/1976)

[struggle4progress]

21 Feb 2005 21:06:11 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Daniel Trotta

MADRID, Feb 21 (Reuters) - An Argentine woman told a Spanish court on Monday she was tied naked to a bed and tortured with electric shocks while pregnant in 1976 in the Argentine military junta's "dirty war" against leftist insurgents.

Marta Remedios Alvarez, once part of the Montaneros insurgent group, also said she recognised the man on trial -- former Argentine Navy Captain Adolfo Scilingo -- as someone who worked at a notorious Navy school used as a detention centre, though he was not part of her torture.

Scilingo is on trial for genocide, torture and terrorism stemming from his role as a naval officer during the dirty war, when thousands of suspected leftist insurgents disappeared. <snip>

He once admitted to pushing political prisoners out of planes and into the sea but has since retracted his story, calling it an elaborate lie. <snip>

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21168372.htm

[imenja]

1. they targeted pregnant women in particular

and took their babies to be given out to families connected to the military. See the film "La historia oficial ," directed by Maria Luisa Bemberg. It won an Academy Award for best foreign film in the mid 1980s. It is a cinematic masterpiece that deals with this issue.